5 e-commerce trend of 2017

This year is revealing itself as a very interesting one for what concern the e-commerce business. Plently are the factors of change but hereafter we only decided to list the top 5. As we know, e-commerce is growing very fast and it is doubling its size every year. If we only consider the USA we find very interesting data: 51% of americans do prefer shopping online over the traditional one.
The online shopping is surely more convenient from certain point of views: no queue stress, discounts that sometimes are more convenient than the instore ones.
Statistics data are telling us that this process will grow in the coming years, overcoming the traditional instore shopping.

In particular, the growth of the online purchases is mostly marked by younger generations. The so called Millennial (69%) are those that take advantage of the best deals you can fine on the Internet. The e-commerce is growing by 23% every year and more and more are the traditional shops that decide to jump on the virtual business. What they are trying to do is just combine and integrate the instore shopping with shipping and orders from the online website.

If you want to make your online business grow, you definetly need to make the shopping experience as easy and intuitive as possible for your customers. In this way you get the chance to fidelize the customer and make sure that your e-shop will always be the first choice among your competitors.

Let's jump into the top 5 trend that everyone should follow in order to improve the e-commerce performance.

1. Customer Experience analysis

At the top the list we find the customer experience analysis. The 69,23% of the items added to the cart are abandoned instead of being purchased. This type of analysis is important because it helps to understand the reason for abandoning strong> part of the cart. Knowing where we are mistaking will help us behaving accordingly.

The customer experience is the most important parameter to measure, even more important than the percentage of customers. This is it because if customers get a negative shopping experience on your website, there are no ways to get them back.
It's becoming extremely important to understand the user behaviour around the website, see what pages are mostly scrolled and what products are most requested so we can adapt our offer accordingly.

2. Predictive analysis

If the customer experience allows us to improve and/or adapt our website to the customer, predictive analysis strong> looks ahead to the future. This analysis seeks to anticipate purchasing behavior. These data are very useful because they not only allow you to decide the price to apply to a promoted product but also to increase the involvement of the customers.
Predictive analysis allow to enpower the e-business activity by getting closer to the customers with a pro active behaviour, increasing the income and the conversion rate. The proper use of this kind of analysis can even help predict inventory, manage resources, and generally ensure more efficient business operation.

3. Chatbot

Chatbots strong> gain the third place in the 2017 e-commerce list. They are certainly not new, but their massive use has allowed them to rank right.
It is estimated that in 2017 at least 8.3 trillion messages strong> will be sent via a messaging platform. It is not surprising that if Macy's or Uber already uses chatbots to answer customer needs/queries.

4. Real time customization

Although the online shopping experience does not include a personal contact with the store staff, the users still want to have a relationship with the brand strong> and expect the companies to know what they may be interested in and what does not. This is because nobody is interested in receiving newsletters or promotions on things we know we are not going to buy.

The best way to fidelize a customer and create a personal relationship strong> with him is to custoize in real-time the shopping experience.
This can obviously take place in different ways, but the most common one is to offer a limited time discount strong> that can be related to what he put into the shopping cart.

You can also divide your customers into price ranges according to what they are willing to spend. In this way you can create custom promotions or discounts. This will help you increase conversions and profits.

5. Shipping innovation

The delivery aspect is awarded the 5th place in the trend ranking. The shipping aspect has some importance in the online shopping process. In fact, 44% of customers strong> abandon products in the shopping cart when shipping costs are too high, if delivery date is unknown or if the delivery takes too long.

Innovative shipping systems have already been experimented in some countries around the world. Through drones for example. Amazon was the first to start this kind of experiment.

To sum up, there is a great future for the e-commerce world. Those who make online shopping are always more. Not to mention the vast presence of online stores that we can find today.

If you want to increase your competitiveness and get to know what your competitors are doing, contact us or visit what we offer for the e-commerce.